11 October 2017

Schedule Change REMINDER

  • Chronology quiz is cancelled
    • The second midterm now worth 20% of grade
  • Following next week's (shortened) lecture, there will be a review quiz, where you have the opportunity to earn extra credit applied to the second midterm
    • The week before the SECOND midterm (1 November)

Major Themes

  • An age of Crusades
  • The west: three ways to address feudalism
    • England
    • France
    • The HRE: Germany & Italy
  • Renewed Urbanism
    • Merchant Republics
    • Scholasticism and the birth of modern universities
  • The Mongol World

The call to Crusade

  • Christian pilgrims had traveled across the Mediterranean in all ages
    • St. Wilibald (d. 787), Anglo-Saxon saint whose pilgrimage to the holy land was recorded in his lifetime
  • The expansion of the Slejuk Turks not only conquered large territories from the ERE, but interrupted pilgrimage routes to the holy sites
  • In response to a request for aid from Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, Pope Urban II preached holy war at the Council of Clermont, unleashing a spontaneous outburst of militant Christian enthusiasm

Urban II at Clermont, 1095

The Turks and Arabs have attacked and have conquered the Roman territory as far west as the shore of the Mediterranean. They have occupied more and more of the lands of those Christians, and have overcome them in seven battles. They have killed and captured many, and have destroyed the churches and devastated the empire. If you permit them to continue thus for awhile with impurity, the faithful of God will be much more widely attacked by them. On this account I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ's heralds to publish this everywhere and to persuade all people of whatever rank, foot-soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends. Moreover, Christ commands it. All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested.

From the Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres (c.1128)

The First Crusade

  • Crusaders from across Francia, Germany and northern Italy converged on Constantinople
    • Initially allied with the Romans, they cooperated in re-taking territory in Asia Minor, but fell-out during the siege of Antioch (1097-8), which instead of returning to the emperor the crusaders kept for themesleves
  • The crusade succeeded in capturing Jerusalem, and the crusaders set about building Crusader states, the most important of which being the Kingdom of Jerusalem, on "feudal" models
    • Crusading orders were established to defend Christendom, including the Knights Hospitlar, Knights Templar, and numerous "national" orders
    • Jerusalem was in Christian hands 1199-1187, 1228-1244, though the legacy of the crusades lasted centuries longer

Subsequent Crusades

  • Nine major numbered crusades to the east
    • Third Crusade (1189-1192), called after Jerusalem fell to Saladin, failed to re-take the city but involved the three most powerful rulers from western Europe: Richard I "Lionheart" of England, Philip II "Augustus" of France, and Emperor Frederick I "Barbarossa" of the HRE
    • Fourth Crusade (1202-1204) was hijacked by Venetians and ended up only attacking Christian cities, including Constantinople, establishing crusader states in Greece, particularly the Latin Empire which ruled Constantinople until 1261
    • Sixth Crusade (1228) involved almost no fighting, concluding when Emperor Fredrick II (1220-1250) of the HRE acquired Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth through negotiations

Other "Crusades" and Holy Wars

  • Spain: the reconquista
    • Ongoing since the 8th century, new kingdoms of Castile, Aragon and Portugal expanded southward aggressively
  • Christian Heretics
    • The Fourth Crusade ended up targeting non-Catholic Christians, more soon followed
    • Albigensian Crusade (southern France, 1209-1229); Bosnian Crusade (against "Bogomils", 1235-1241)
  • Northern Crusades
    • Against "pagan" Lithuanians and Orthodox Russians in the eastern Baltic
    • Establishment and expansion of the Teutonic Order
    • Russians won decisive victories at Battle of Neva (1240) and Battle n the Ice (1242)

Anglo-Norman England

  • Much of eastern England had been part of the Danelaw
    • Cnute the Great (1016-1035) united England, Denmark and Norway, the union ended with his death
  • Norman conquest (1066)
    • When Edward the Confessor died, there was a three-way disputed succession between Anglo-Saxon, Danish, and Norman claimants
    • William I (1066-1087) was the Norman claimant, uniting England with his ancestral holdings in France
    • The Normns imposed themselves as a French-speaking elite atop the Anglo-Saxon-speaking populace, maintiaining a distinct identity for centuries

Part of the Bayeux Tapestry (1070s, now on display in the Tapestry Museum in Bayeux, Normandy, France), which depicts the Norman invasion of England culminating with the Battle of Hastings (1066)

230 feet long, 20 inches tall, containing 50 scenes captioned in Latin

The Angevin Empire

  • After the Anarchy (1135-1153), Henry II (1154-1189) united England with Normday, Anjou, and married Eleanor of Aquitane, uniting her duchies to his dynasty
    • Henry strengthened central authority, reforming the judiciary and attempting to curtail the strength fo the church, with limited success
  • After Henry II died, a series of weak kings (his sons Richard I and John, his grandson Henry III) (Robin Hood stories are about this period)
    • They lost much of their holdings in France, and had their power curtailed by increasingly powerful nobility in England who imposed the Magna Carta (1215) and organized as a parliament (late 13th century)

English Expansion

  • Edward I (1272-1307) succeeded his weak father, Henry III
    • He worked with the new parliamentary institution to strengthen England
    • He conquered Wales, and attempted to conquer Scotland, which didn't go as well (Braveheart is a romanticized story loosley based on these campaigns)
  • Edward III (1327-1377) inherited a strong English kingdom, but only a few territories remaining in Aquitaine
    • He began the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453), when the kings of England attempted to assert their claim to the throne of France

Capetian France

  • Dynasty named for Hugh Capet (987-996), the first post-Carolingian king of the Franks
  • French kings were very weak in the 11th and early 12th centuries
    • "Feudal" system meant they directly ruled a very small territory; most was held by highly-autonomous vassals
  • Philip II "Augustus" (1180-1223) was the first to greatly expand royal authority and directly-administered territory at the expense of the local nobility
    • He out-played both Richard and John, seizing Normandy, Anjou, and much of Aquitane, and almost dethroning John and putting his son, the future Louis VIII, on the English throne
    • For the first time in centuries, the king was more powerful than any of his vassals

The Basilica of St. Denis, where French kings were coronated. The current structure was built starting in 1135, a pioneer of Gothic architecture

French Expansion

  • Albigensian Crusade (1208-1244) crushed a heterodox Christian sect in the south
  • "St." Louis IX (1226-1270) reformed aspects of society (reforming the judiciary and ending trials by combat), but also was the first French king to rule as autocrat, claiming divine right
  • Philip IV "the Fair" (1285-1314) further centralized authority in the hands of the king, expelling Jews, liquidating the Knights Templar, and curtailing the authority of the French parliament, the Estates-General
    • In 1328, the main line of the Capetian dynasty died out, plunging France into a protracted succession crisis which expanded into the Hundred Years War

The Holy Roman Empire (HRE)

  • Charlemagne's empire was short-lived, fracturing into many weak realms
  • Otto I "the Great" (936-973) reunited Eastern Francia (Germany), Middle Francia (Lorraine), and Italy into the Holy Roman Empire, ended the Magyar's westward expansion, and began German expansion eastward
  • The emperors relied on papal coronation for legitimation, giving the pope a great deal of power (and Italy an excessive amount of influence) over politics
  • Henry IV (1056-1106) attempted to centralize the state and challenge the power of the clergy (the Investiture Controversy), a struggle he ultimately lost (Road to Canossa, 1077)
    • The end of the Salian dynasty left a power vacuum, and the position of emperor became elective rather than hereditary

The Decentralized Empire

  • Endemic conflict between Papal and Imperial factions (Welfs and Hohenstaufens, aka Guelphs and Ghibbelines)
  • Fredrick I "Barbarossa" (1152-1190) managed to strengthen imperial authority over Germany at the cost of support in northern Italy, though his major accomplishment was marrying his son to the heiress of the Kingdom of Sicily, producing his grandson …
  • Fredrick II (1215-1250), King of Sicily and crowned emperor, he gained Jerusalem peacably and turned southern Italy into a model of enlightened government at the cost of control over Germany, but the political union collapsed shortly after his death
  • Thereafter, imperial control over Italy waned, and the nobility of Germany gained power at the expense of imperial authority, leaving Germany disunited for another 700 years

St. Francis of Assisi

  • lived 1181-1226, he was born to a wealthy merchant family, and was a soldier in his youth before undergoing a deep religious conversion around 1206
  • Known in his own time as the "Second Christ," Francis and his disciples lived an exemplary Christian life of total simplicity: begging for food and shelter, and preching of God's love and the brotherhood of all living creatures
    • In 1219 he famously went to Egypt and attempted to end the crusades by converting the Sultan to Christianity
    • Shortly before his death, he received the stigmata, Christ's wounds appearing on his own body
  • After his death, his followers were reorganized as the Franciscan Order who, alongside other new orders like the Dominicans, spread the study of Theology and Philosophy across Europe

Fredrick II: Founding a University

These are the conditions that we offer to the students. First, that there will be doctors and teachers in every Faculty. We assure the students, wherever they come from, that they will be able to come , stay and return without any risk to their persons or goods. The best houses will be given to them , and their rent will be at most two ounces of gold. All the houses will be rented for a sum up to that amount, bases on an estimate by two citizens and two students. There will be loans given to students, based on their needs, by those who are designated to do so, with the pawning of the books, which will be temporarily returned after receiving the guarantee from other students. The student will not leave the city until he has paid back his debt, or has given back the pawns given to him temporarily. Such pawns will not be requested by the creditor as long as the Students remains in School. In civil trials all will have to appear before their teachers. As for grain meat, fish wine and other things that students need,

we will not make any rule since the province has all these things in abundance and all will be sold to students as it is to citizens. We invite the students to such a laudable and great task, we promise to respect these conditions, to honor your persons and to order universally that you should be honored by all.

Emperor Fredrick II, establishing the University of Naples

Syracuse 5 June 1224

Medieval Universities

  • Early foundations with (mostly*) continuous history to the present
    • University of Bologna (1088), famed for law
    • *University of Paris (before 1150)
    • University of Oxford (1167)
    • University of Cambridge (1209)
    • University of Salamanca (1218)
    • University of Padua (by 1222)
    • University of Naples (1224)
  • Four disciplines: Theology, Law, Medicine, and Philosophy

Scholasticism

  • The introduction of paper technology to Europe greatly decreased the cost of producing books
  • The crusades brought new influences into the Latin west from the Greek and Arabic worlds
    • Many classical Greek works had disappeared from the west after Late Antiquity
    • Especially in spain, Latin translations were produced of Arabic translations of Greek philosophy, as well as of original Arabic works on mathematics and astronomy
    • The sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade saw more Greek texts brought to Italy and there studied and translated
  • Scholasticism set about harmonize medieval Christian theology with classical philosophy, especially Aristotle and Neoplatonism (C3-6 AD)

Important Scholastics

  • Peter Abelard (1079-1142) and his lover the philosoper Eloise (c.1090-1164) brought Aristotle back to the western canon and contributed their own works on ethics and logic
  • Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), a Dominican who contributed to the study of theology, ethics, and political theory, and most importantly produced a synthesis of Aristotle with church doctrine which has influenced theology ever since
  • William of Ockham (c.1287-1347), a Franciscan who produced important works on theology, logic and physics
    • Today is most commonly known for Occam's razor, "Plurality must never be posited without necessity" (i.e. the simplest explanation is usually the right one)

Republics and Communes

  • The emergence of universities coincided with the reemergence of urban life and a massive population expansion
  • Merchant Republics like Venice and Genoa in the Mediterranean and the Hanseatic League in the North and Baltic seas dominated trade routes and profited from the crusades
    • Genoa and Venice gained lands in the eastern mediterranean as a result of the crusades, and Venice would hold onto its small empire until the republic was annexed during the French Revolution in 1797
    • Italian republics were ruled by a Doge (from Latin dux or "Duke"), elected by the city's aristocracy for his lifetime
  • The Commune of Rome (1144-1193) expelled the popes and modelled the city's government on the ancient Republic

The Mongols

  • Turko-Mongolic peoples on the steppes had been in regular contact with the settled worlds of Europe and the Middle East since at least Late Antiquity
  • Ghenghis Khan (c.1162-1227) united the mongolic peoples and began a series of conquests that united most of Asia and Europe under the largest contiguous empire in world history
  • His successors would rule most of Russia, China, India, and the Middle East, and would twice attempt to invade Japan in 1274 and 1281

Pax Mongolica

  • Their legacy includes the brutality and genocide required to build the empire
    • The Siege of Baghdad (1258) saw the largest city in the world sacked, its libraries destroyed, and the last of the primary line of Abbasid caliphs executed, ending the "Golden Age" of Islam
  • On the other hand, the Pax Mongolica fostered trade and cultural exchange across the whole of the Eurasian landmass
    • Marco Polo (1254-1324), a Venetian trader, left a detailed record of his travels from the Mediterranean to China and back
    • It also created new vectors for the spread of disease, the most important of which being the Black Death which reached Constantinople in 1347

Pop-culture and history

Movies

  • Lion in Winter (1968) - Peter O'Toole is a fantastic Henry II
  • Kingdom of Heavan (2005) - despite egalitarian nonsense, actually pretty good chronology of the fall of Jerusalem in 1187
  • Braveheart (1995) - a somewhat gory cinematic masterpiece, but is rife with historical inaccuricies (Google can fill you in)
  • Robin Hood (any) - fun fiction at best

Games

  • Civilization series
  • Total War series (Rome, Medieval)
  • Crusader Kings II (2012) - a dynastic RPG of the medieval world

Further Reading

Primary

  • The Fordham Medieval Sourcebook: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/sbook.asp
  • Joinville and Villehardouin, Chronicles of the Crusade, tr. M.B.B. Shaw (1963)
  • Niketas Chroniates, O City of Byzantium: Annals of Niketas Chroniates, tr. H.J. Magoulias (1984)

Secondary

  • N. Christie, Muslims and Crusaders: Christianity's Wars in the Middle East, 1095-1382, from the Islamic Sources (2014)
  • J. Phillips, The Crusades, 1095-1204, Second edition (2014)
  • B.W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (1987)